Anvil Storage Utilities

Version and / or Patch Used: RC6

So what is Anvil Storage Utilities? First of all, it's a storage benchmark for SSD's, and HDD's, where you can check and monitor your performance. The Standard Storage Benchmark performs a series of tests; you can run a full test, or just the read or the write test, or you can run a single test, i.e. 4K QD16.

The software is used several different ways, and to show different aspects for each drive. We've chosen to use this software to show the performance of a drive with two different data sets. The first is with compressible data, and the second data set is incompressible data. Several users have requested this data in our SSD reviews.

0-Fill Compressible Data

When data is compressible, our SuperSSpeed array can pump out Hyper-Class performance.

0-Fill Compressible Read IOPS through Queue Depth Scale

Compressible read performance is good at low queue depths where it matters most. As the commands ramp up though, our little array falls behind the larger arrays.

Compression 100% Incompressible Data

Incompressible data is a SandForce based drive's nemesis, unless there is SLC under the hood. Only the EVO array can score a higher point total than our little SuperSSpeed array in this test.

Incompressible Read IOPS through Queue Depth Scale

At QD1 -QD2 our SuperSSpeed array is markedly faster than the 600 series array, and the Chronos array. It's easy to see the superior performance of SLC, because our SuperSSpeed array, with only 25% the capacity of our Chronos array, is outperforming the Chronos array significantly from QD1 - QD16.

Incompressible Write IOPS through Queue Scale

Here's where SLC comes into its own. Although both our SuperSSpeed array and our Chronos array have the exact same LSI SandForce 2281 controller, and even though our SuperSSpeed array is handicapped by its small capacity, the SuperSSpeed array smashes the Chronos array. By QD 32, our little SuperSSpeed array that's only one tenth the capacity of the EVO array, takes first place.